


You Lied

by EveningRose309



Series: The Sacrifice Verse [3]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Family Angst, Family Issues, M/M, Mentions of Ballet, Mentions of Murder, Mentions of Suicide, Percy is in here I swear, mentions of abuse, slightly unhealthy relationships, suicidal character, they love each other tho, who's using who
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:47:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21717124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EveningRose309/pseuds/EveningRose309
Summary: The dark lord lies a lot. His little girl hates it.
Relationships: Gellert Grindelwald & Other(s), Original Percival Graves/Gellert Grindelwald
Series: The Sacrifice Verse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/999351
Kudos: 3





	You Lied

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AlastorGrim](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlastorGrim/gifts).



The first time she made that threat, he hadn't cared. 

She had been a girl barely higher than his hip and he a rising tidal wave about to sweep the Statute. A war was coming, he knew, he saw it- there would be two, for muggles were fickle, and their problems always came in twos -and he had no time for prissy little girls with trust issues. 

That wasn't to say he hadn't stopped her from jumping. 

"You want to kill them."

"No."

"Chain them up-"

"I have no time-"

"If you have no time, then what are you doing here? Go back to your friends. I'm sure they need you more."

The friends in question has been his generals. A bumbling bunch of idiots who had failed to realize that not all eight year old were stupid. 

"What did they say?"

Or were in any form compliant. 

"Ava. What. Did. You. Hear?"

She took two inches from the window. Another two, and he began to suspect she didn't care about the ledge. Swinging her scrawny legs back and forth as if twenty stories was just your ring of the mill swing or tree branch. 

And then she looked at him, and he was sorely reminded of why she was with him in the first place. 

"Enough to know why Mum never wrote."

And it stung like hellfire. 

"Fine. Fine. Let's talk like adults shall we? You can't change my mind if you end up a splattered tomaten on the pavement."

She gave him a look that said she would gladly take the place said beaten fruit, but came down anyway, presumably because his mentions of food made her hungry. 

They'd talked over a bowl of soup. He told her some cock and bull story about pleasing the purebloods- how wonderful a thing legilimency was -which seemed to please her well enough, though he hadn't escaped the pinky promise of 'I won't jump off the roof if you leave the muggles alone'. He hadn't cared then, if she did, and he'd gone to break it the second he tucked her into bed and for months after the Russians offered to teach her ballet whilst he was working. 

It worked for two years. 

Two years, and he'd gone and gotten himself fond of the little 'darling'. Attached, which was not an idea he liked all that much- he reasoned that that was because she was a nuisance and not because he feared for her safety. 

He'd visit Russia sporadically to see her and his contact there told him how wonderful a little dancer she was and that she had slowly learned both Deustch and the local speak. The first year, he put her to the test, of which she passed by reporting that half the Russian mob wanted to fuck him and the other quarter wanted to stage an ambush for him two days from then. All in German, using words not fit for a girl in a frilly skirt and pointe shoes to say. 

He'd done away with the quarter then took her out for dinner and a show, the home to the family house that hadn't felt like one until she was standing in his kitchen, asking him why there were a dozen knives hanging from the ceiling. 

By the year-end they were laughing at each other. Odd jokes only they understood, muttering things in the two languages she spoke like water, all the while his followers remained oblivious and blissfully amused at 'the lord and his pet'. It was an easy thing, their friendship, though she still walked a distance from him in public and he dared not touch her hands even when he knew she was cold. 

It was late into the second year when she found out. 

"You lied," and it had felt like the cruciatus when he heard that whisper. 

"Ava-"

"You- those people- you- you-"

"Ava-"

"You never meant what you said-"

He'd swallowed. 

And she started laughing. 

"I- I was a game to you," it was hysterics. "That's all I am isn't it? A game? A toy? Something pretty you can show off to your friends?" 

She'd slowly been walking backwards. Backwards, until her back was pressed to the window. 

"Well, if I'm just something pretty-"

And he heard the creaking-

"-you could stand to lose a toy, can't you Grindelwald?"

She unlatched it and suddenly he was halfway across the room, wrestling her from that damned ledge. 

"Stop that! Stop it- Ava!"

"Why should I? I'm just another muggle! Another piece of utter garbage you can throw out-"

"You are a witch!" She kicked him. "You are- of magical blood!"

"And whose fault is that!"

It was then that he damned Russia's ballet corps, for a ten year old should not be able to kick that high and clock him straight on the nose. 

"You," she'd gritted out. "Are a monster. You're a liar and I should've never let Gissy send me away to you!"

He looked up from the spotty carpet to see her already stood at the window frame. 

"Ava-"

"We're done! You can do whatever the hell you like now, it doesn't matter!"

She was shaking. And he knew this would be his only chance. 

"Ava-"

"You lied."

"Yes, I lied Pretty, I did-"

"Don't call me that!"

He stopped talking.

"Don't-" she sniffled.

"That was what damned her. He- he took her. He killed Da because she was- and he was-"

And then he was holding her. Her tiny, tiny frame just filling up. He carded through her dark locks, playing with that strip of bone white he never could quite keep his eyes off of. 

"He killed Da."

"I know."

"Da was a muggle."

"I know."

"And muggles…are trash."

"No-"

"Don't lie."

_Don't lie_. If anyone else had said that, he would have scoffed. 

But she wasn't anyone else. Anyone else wasn't suicidal or hated magic or was his niece or had silver-gold eyes-

"I won't hurt them," he found himself saying. Wide eyes stared up at him. Betrayed. Unbelieving. 

"I won't hurt them," he repeated. "I won't hurt them if you stay. If you learn magic and dance for me and stay and let me call you Pretty-"

"You sound like a depraved old man."

He smiled. "Perhaps I am."

Then they were staring at each other. And she sighed. 

"I hate magic."

"I know-"

"But I s'pose it's not all bad," she shrugged. "Helps me dance. Helped Gissy get out of the house. Helped you save me from-"

He hugged her closer. 

"Can I call you Pretty then?"

She curled into him. And nodded. 

"Then you're mine. You are mine, you understand? No pureblood is going to take you from me, no bastard on this earth, no one. Do you understand?"

She nodded again. "Your Pretty?"

"My Pretty."

And he kept by his word. 

Until she was eleven. Until Hogwarts took her. Until the war swept him up and away from that bliss and swept her into it without him noticing. War tore her from him, made her aware, made her into something he never wanted, never dreamed. His visions became peppered with images of her. Nightmarish images, bloody, garish, terrible. 

But the worst, the worst hadn't been when he found her bloody. Not when he found out she'd made a vow that inadvertently made her a permanent soldier, a killer, a mindless weapon to his wretched former second. The worst hadn't been when he'd screamed at her and sent her away angry and growling to the States, where she never wrote to him- she had, everyday, at Hogwarts -and all he had to know of her were Percival's letters and he suspected those two were conspiring, because he could tell the words were lies and that his girl was not 'sitting still and doing nothing'. The worst hadn't even been their end, when he was cradling her body to his chest in the cold white snow, her heart a flicker and her eyes blank as cement. 

The worst had been a year prior, when she'd come into his office at Nurmengard after years of not being at his side. He'd been so glad, so damn happy she was there. That she'd come home, at long last, taken that flimsy portkey all the way up to-

-then saw the ring on her finger. And the newspapers. And the files in her hands-

"You lied."

They fell. 

And she was gone. 

  
  



End file.
